


New Attitude

by thingswithwings



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Partnership, Winter in Schitt's Creek, dressing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 17:36:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21122636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: Ronnie's having a rough time this winter. Karen helps. Additional support from Patti Labelle.





	New Attitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olive2pod (olive2read)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olive2read/gifts), [livrelibre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livrelibre/gifts).

> Originally written to be podficced by olive2readpodfic for the Schitt's Creek Frozen Over fest! Now available in a text version, but [here's a link to the podfic if you want to experience the original version!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009797)

The week starts going to hell before Ronnie’s even out the door on Monday morning. She drops her glass of orange juice and has to clean up the resulting mess, she wastes ten minutes trying to find her keys, her client texts her wanting to change the paint colour, _again_; she’s stressed and harried already and it’s not even eight a.m.

“Do you think you’ll have time this week to finish tiling the downstairs bathroom?” Karen calls, as she’s putting on her boots and about to head out. “Your mom is visiting next weekend.”

“I know when my mom is visiting,” Ronnie grouses, realizing that she’s done the buttons on her shirt up crooked. She starts unbuttoning them again. “It’ll get done.”

Karen pauses, putting her sock foot down on the floor rather than putting it into the boot she’s holding. As a result, she’s standing with one boot on, body tilted to one side. 

“Okay, grumpy,” she says, lightly. “I was going to say, if you don’t have time, you could get one of the guys to come and do it.”

Ronnie frowns down at the buttons. “Yeah, cuz that wouldn’t be embarrassing. Contractor can’t tile her own bathroom.”

“Shoemaker’s children. You know Chris would get it.”

Ronnie sighs. The buttons are really tiny, and the buttonholes are really tight, and it was a pain getting the shirt done up in the first place. She hears an unbalanced clonk-shuffle as Karen walks over to her, still wearing one boot, and brushes her hands away. Her fingers make swift work of the buttons.

“Chris would get it,” Ronnie allows. Karen glances up at her, smiles softly. Ronnie forgets, sometimes, that she can still feel this way, this swooping wild dangerous crush-love that she felt for Karen back when they met fifteen years ago. Karen always finds little ways to remind her.

When she finishes the buttons, Ronnie puts two fingers under her sharp little chin and draws her up for a kiss. “Sorry I was being grumpy. Been a rough morning.”

Karen grins, then clonk-shuffles back over to the door. “Poor little baby,” she says. Ronnie rolls her eyes, even though Karen can’t see her do it, because she knows that Karen will know she’s doing it without looking. “Cheer up. It can only get better from here.”

*

It doesn’t get better. The week is endless petty bullshit, nothing huge but with plenty of small things going wrong. Unexpected delays, missed deliveries, asshole clients, Roland and Moira teaming up to propose the most dipshit ideas possible for spending their Q3 budgetary surplus. There’s a storm on Wednesday, not bad enough to justify delaying anything, but just bad enough that her truck gets stuck in the heavy wet snow on main street and she has to ask _Patrick_, the only other person out that early in the morning, for help pushing it out. Each thing that goes wrong means another tedious email exchange, or extra hours on the job, or time spent chasing suppliers around. She gets home later each day, feeling more worn out, and then feels guilty on top of it because Karen ends up making dinner even when it’s Ronnie’s day to do it.

“I haven’t seen the sun,” she complains, as she washes the dishes on Thursday night. “I hate all the indoor work I have to do in the winter.” It’s better in the warm months, building decks and painting houses with the sun on her back, the breeze against her neck: Ronnie hates the winter.

“Hard to paint anything outdoors when it’s minus thirty,” Karen replies.

Ronnie hands her a plate to dry. “Plus I broke a toe today.”

Karen stops with her towel halfway to the plate. “Sorry. You what?” 

Ronnie cackles at little at the look on her face. “Just a little one. Technically Chris broke it; he dropped a five gallon paint pail on my foot.” 

Karen shakes her head, drying the plate and setting it in the cupboard. “Okay, that’s it. I’m calling Chris and he is definitely tiling our bathroom tomorrow. You need a break before your mother gets here.”

Ronnie sighs, because she can’t deny it. “He does kinda owe me for the toe.”

“Damn right he does.”

*

When Ronnie gets home the next day, shutting the door against the frigid air outside, the bathroom is finished and Karen is mixing her a dirty martini. By the time Ronnie gets out of her boots, parka, toque, and gloves, the drink is ready.

“With an olive, fancy,” Ronnie says, taking it and kissing her. “What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion is you finished this week from hell and lived to tell the tale. I was thinking maybe I should take you out.”

Ronnie glances down at herself; she’s covered in plaster dust. “What, like this?”

“I’ll run you a bath.”

“Will you now.”

“Mm-hm.” Karen takes her hand and leads her upstairs, to the bathroom that doesn’t smell like fresh grout. There are candles lit, and Ronnie spies her favourite lemon-lavender bath salts. 

“You had a little plan,” she accuses, raising an eyebrow. 

“You don’t take time for yourself unless I make little plans,” Karen counters, turning on the water and putting down the plug. “Come on, take off the work clothes.”

Ronnie sets her martini down on the sink and crosses her arms. “What if I don’t want to?”

“What, you want to be smelly and dusty?”

Sometimes, Ronnie sort of does; sometimes she likes the feeling of it, the signs of hard work worn on her body like badges. Sometimes she takes a little secret pride in every splatter of paint and every bit of fabric gone thin with wear.

“Here,” Karen says, rolling her eyes. Her fingers go to Ronnie’s buttons, forcing Ronnie to drop her arms, and she undoes them as quickly and neatly as she did them up on Monday morning. 

Slowly, she peels Ronnie out of everything, shirt and bra, socks and pants and underwear, and Ronnie feels a little sigh of relief pass through her as she does it, like she’s shedding an itchy outer skin. Karen pours the bath salts and stirs them around, then turns off the water.

“You’re a pretty good wife,” Ronnie says, stepping up to her, naked and caked in the day’s sweat and grime. Karen kisses her, her hand falling to Ronnie’s breast, thumb just nudging over the nipple. 

“Get in the bath,” she breathes. Ronnie does; the water is nearly scalding hot, just the way she likes it, and after the cold outside it feels delicious, wrapping her numb, chilled body in a blanket of warmth, the heat starting to penetrate to the core of her, to her bones where she’s coldest. She sighs loudly, ostentatiously, and Karen laughs.

“Okay, this is all right, I suppose,” she says, accepting her martini back from Karen. Her eyes start to slip closed, a reaction to the water and the alcohol warming her from inside and out, but then she opens them again to look up at her wife, her girl, her one and only. “Are you joining me?”

“Tempting,” Karen says. “But I think I’ll let you soak for a bit.” She leans down, kissing Ronnie’s mouth, and Ronnie leans up eagerly to kiss her back, feeling energized by the heat of the water and the supple, knowing press of Karen’s mouth. Karen’s hand swoops down through the water, over her breast and belly, down to her thigh, and then she slips two fingers onto Ronnie’s clit, sure and steady, and rubs a few times.

“You sure? You’re definitely welcome in here,” Ronnie manages, gasping, looking up at her.

“I’ve got other plans,” Karen says, and takes her fingers away. 

“You and your plans,” Ronnie grumbles. 

When Karen leaves the room, Ronnie does let her eyes fall closed, glorying in the near-painful heat of the water, sipping her martini slowly.

When the water starts to cool, Ronnie cleans herself up, feeling the last traces of the day, of the week, slip from her body. She emerges from the bathroom in a towel, skin flushed warm, body loose and easy with most of her aches soaked away. Even her broken toe feels less annoying now.

She’s also more than a little turned on, and ready to see what else Karen has planned.

Karen, it turns out, has laid out some clothes for her on their bed: her long red velvet dress, her fancy lingerie. 

“I’m gonna get cold in this,” she calls toward the hallway. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I’ll keep you warm,” Karen calls back. 

Ronnie, still hot from the bath, shakes her head. She puts it all on, one piece at a time. She hasn’t worn any of this in ages, she realizes; the last time she wore this dress was . . . she can’t even remember. Come to think of it, she can’t think of the last time she wore a dress at all.

It flutters down over her body, shoulders down to hips, the hem brushing against her calves. The snow outside isn’t too deep; she should be able to walk comfortably in this without getting it dirty.

When she comes out of the bedroom, Karen is waiting for her. Ronnie stops short, draws in a breath; Karen’s wearing a dress of her own, short and black, that emphasizes her long legs. Ronnie doesn’t remember seeing her in it before, and Ronnie’s pretty sure she’d remember. 

Karen and her little plans. Jesus, she’s lucky.

“You’re really gonna get cold,” Ronnie points out, when she can pick her jaw up off the floor. Karen smirks, and holds up Ronnie’s fur coat. 

“I’m thinking you’ll keep me warm,” she says. 

“Guess I’m gonna have to.” Ronnie slips her arms into the fur, closing her eyes at the sensation, the warmth, the softness of it. She feels like a different person than the person she was during the week, covered in dust and paint, exhausted and annoyed, perpetually behind schedule. 

In this dress, in this coat, with Karen next to her, she feels glorious, powerful and glamorous. In control. 

“You look so beautiful,” Karen says, stroking her hands over the fur, from Ronnie’s neck down her shoulders and arms, petting and caressing like Ronnie is something delicate and soft, not a stressed-out councilwoman and contractor with sore muscles and a broken toe. Karen’s hands press against the little hairs of the coat, press in against the warm fur, and Ronnie feels special, and treasured, and feminine in a way she doesn’t always want but sometimes loves. Right now, she loves it, the way Karen makes her feel, like she’s expensive and precious.

“You’re the beautiful one,” Ronnie protests, cupping Karen’s face in her hand and kissing her softly. “Where are we going?”

“There’s an outdoor winter market on the Elmdale Commons,” Karen says, putting on her wool greatcoat and gloves. “I thought we could wander around a bit so I could show you off. Then I booked us a reservation at Magnolia.”

“Very fancy,” Ronnie smiles. Coat buttoned, she holds out her arm, and Karen slips her hand onto Ronnie’s elbow. “Worth going back into the cold, for that.”

“It’s always worth going out in the cold if you know you’ve got something warm to come back to,” Karen says, smiling.

Ronnie kisses her jaw, slow and soft, a promise for later. “When we come back, we’ll have to find some way to warm up.”


End file.
